


Is This A Great State Or What?

by ScotlandEvander



Series: Various States [22]
Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Babies, Clint Barton-centric, F/M, Family Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-06
Packaged: 2018-07-12 14:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7108132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScotlandEvander/pseuds/ScotlandEvander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton needs sleep ASAP as he's thinking the Winter Solider is really cute for not knowing what love is. Also, wait a second, Jess knew where the Winter Solider was and now she lost him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is This A Great State Or What?

 

**Disclaimer: If you know it, I do not own it.**

* * *

_When you fall like a statue / I’m gon’ be there to catch you / Put you on your feet, you on your feet_

_-Phillip Phillips, “Gone Gone Gone”_

* * *

Laura was passed out cold. Clint smiled softly, easing Nate out of her arms, covering her up, and taking the fussing baby with him.

“You know, your siblings both zonked out after a feed. Only you’d still be awake, you brat.”

The baby continued to fuss, so Clint moved the kid so he was being held upright and instantly he ceased making any noise. Clint rolled his eyes upward. Nate didn’t want to cuddle, didn’t want to lie down, didn’t want to sleep. He spent the first two weeks he wasn’t sleeping due to sheer exhaustion (he fought sleep like no other), fighting to get control of his neck muscles so he could sit up without his head flopping around. He now could hold his head unsupported, which pleased the little guy greatly.

Clint headed for the kitchen to get himself something to snack on. Nate gurgled, non-wobbly head moving around to take in everything.

“What are you doing up?”

Clint paused to hand off Nate to the woman seated in his kitchen. She took Nate and held him as he liked, sitting on her lap and supported via his under armpits. When Jess had arrived a few days prior, Clint didn’t ask questions or make fun of her when she awkwardly tried to hold Nate like people are usually taught.

“So, you gonna tell me why you randomly showed up?” Clint asked. “Three am is a great time for getting things off your chest.”

“He’s gone.”

Clint leaned against the counter and munched on one of Laura’s breast milk inducing muffins. (What? They were really good.)

“He’ll be back,” Clint offered, wondering who she was talking about. He wasn’t aware of anyone running away, other than Loki. And Jess knew Loki would come back when he was done “finding himself.”

“No, he won’t be back. If he hasn't come back by now, he’s not going to come back.”

“That’s a gloomy outlook,” Clint remarked, grabbing another muffin.

(He’d make Laura more tomorrow— or rather later today. Promise.)

“Not really.”

“So, this guy left you and you’re here because you can’t get the support of your best friend because he ran away to be a super spy. Man, your life sucks.”

Jess began to jiggle her leg, which Nate seemed to like judging by the gummy wide mouth expression he was wearing.

“I think he was kidnapped.”

“And you’ve not called the cops because…”

“Because he’s Bucky Barnes and no one would believe me!” she screeched, which Nate did not like as he let out a rather loud wail. She started bouncing her leg even more, which calmed Nate down. He stuck his fist into his mouth. Or tried. Mostly he just drooled all over himself.

“Bucky—wait, a second. Let me get this straight. This guy who…left you was Bucky Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“Bucky Barnes also known as the Winter Solider,” Clint said, cross his arms across his chest. “I know I’m sleep deprived, but you’re trying to tell me that for the past year and a half you’ve been hanging out with the Winter Soldier while Rogers globe trots looking for this guy?”

“He lived with me,” Jess said and launched into the entire story.

At end, Clint stared. Jess was one of his best friends. He might not be of her generation, have much in common with her past their adventure as Loki Mind Drones, but she was one of the best friends he had. She was different from Natasha because she wasn’t a trained killer. She’d never killed anyone in her entire life (Clint didn’t count Killian, as that was not Jess, but rather a mentally unbalanced witch and she didn’t even remember it). Hell, she wouldn’t even kill a spider that was freaking her out. Clint lost track of the times he’d walked into Steve’s to find her staring at a glass on the floor where she’d trapped a spider.

She was gentle— like Laura.

She wasn’t part of his SHIELD world— like Laura.

She was his ONLY friend who wasn’t part of SHEILD (or whatever they were now).

He had his wife and kids and Jess who weren’t part of SHIELD.

What did that say about him?

He needed to join BINGO or something.

“Okay, fine. So you’re in love with a former Soviet-HYDRA assassin. I can fix this,” Clint claimed.

Jess blinked at him blankly and jerked when Nate’s head lolled onto his shoulder. The kid had zonked out. Jess carefully stood and put the baby in his portable bassinet that pretty much lived in the kitchen because that seemed to be the ONLY place he fell asleep. She stared at the sleeping baby (who was downright adorable).

“What do you mean I love him?”

Clint rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Damn it.”

“What do you mean I love him?” Jess hissed, turning to face Clint. “I can’t love him. He’s the freaking Winter Solider.”

Clint shrugged. “Fine. You don’t love him.”

“He doesn’t even know what love is! He was asking everyone because he couldn’t figure it out.”

That was kind of adorable.

Oh, man, Clint needed sleep.

“He was brainwashed by HYDRA for decades and sent out to assassinate people. I’m pretty sure he killed Kennedy.”

“Why?”

“Because he goes freakily blank every single time I mention Kennedy.”

“You spend a lot of time talking about Kennedy?”

“No. I love Kill Hannah.”

Clint blankly stared at her.

“A band. The band came to campus when I was a sophomore and I fell in love with one of their songs. It’s called “I Wanna Be A Kennedy.” He goes blank each time it comes on. And one time we watched one of those shows on the assassination on the History Channel and he was…blank the entire time. And he blinked a lot, which he does when he can’t access the Winter Solider stuff that was wiped.”

“So, you theorized the Winter Solider was sent to take out Kennedy?”

“He was anti-communist! And the whole Cuban Missile crisis! Who knows what the guy would have done with another term! His whole life!”

Jess pulled at her short blue hair. (She’d chopped off all her hair and died it a very, very, very dark blue that was almost black.)

“Come here. We’re going outside before you shout down the entire house.”

“But, the baby. You can’t leave the baby alone in the house.”

“He won’t be alone, Jess. Laura’s upstairs. Connor and Lila are in their rooms down the hall. And, look. Stark sent me this.”

Clint yanked a drawer open and pulled out the baby monitor Stark had made. He set the little camera up, aimed it at the bassinet, and pulled up the app on his StarkPhone.

“Totally state of the art. I’ll stare at it the whole time, but trust me. He’s asleep and when he wakes up he’ll tell us. We’re just going on the porch.”

“It’s cold.”

“Here. Blanket. Do you need anything?”

“No.”

Clint wrapped up in the blanket. They both went outside and Clint glued his eyes to the screen of his phone and stared at the boring baby.

“You think HYDRA got him?”

“I don’t know. Someone likely got him. I pinged his iLoki and found it in Thailand. I called Loki, who didn’t answer and I think his phone is dead forever because it doesn’t even ring.”

Clint turned his head and looked at the woman. She was slowly destroying the flimsy shirt she was wearing, reverting it back to yarn and thread.

“Yeah. That’s freaking me out. I called Jim to ask about Loki, but he was rather tight lipped about what was going on, then also stopped answering his phone. No one wants to talk to me.”

“I do! I always answer now that SHEILD is dead and the Glow Stick is de-funked.”

Jess smiled wanly and stared out into the distance, still shredding her shirt. “He said it was his last mission and now he’s missing.”

Clint sighed and stared out into his front yard, which was shrouded in darkness. He loved the country. He could see the sky filled with stars and airplanes, unlike in the city where there was too much light pollution too see much of anything other than low clouds on a cloudy night. Jess cleared her throat. Clint glanced at her before looking back at his phone screen. Nate was still sleeping and still totally boring.

“I know he asked you not to tell Steve, but I think you gotta tell Steve.”

Jess sighed and made a noise that kind of hurt Clint’s heart.

“He’s going to kill me,” she muttered.

“Naw. He might do that scary silent anger thing, but he won’t kill you. One, you’re a good person, and two, Loki likes you.”

“Loki ran away.”

“Yeah, but Steve still loves the idiot,” Clint reminded her. “Loves him so hard he’ll take the moron back the moment he drags his sorry ass home.”

“Love sucks.”

“Sometimes.”

“He loves _Frozen_. Like to the point he has it memorized. He can perform the entire movie. Not very well, but he knows the whole thing.”

“Please tell me you mean the Winter Solider and not Loki or Steve.”

“Yeah. He goes by Sebastian, not Winter Solider.”

“That’s good,” Clint allowed, peeking at her out the corner of his eye. “If he went by Winter Solider I’d be worried.”

Jess tucked a chunk of blue hair behind her ear and sighed deeply. “I should tell Steve. I’ve been debating for two whole months if I ought to tell him or not.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been sitting on this for that long.”

Jess cringed. “At first I thought he was just avoiding capture. It’s happened before where he didn’t call because he was avoiding someone, but the longest he’d been out of touch was two weeks. And then I got a letter.”

“He sent you a letter?”

“Yeah. It only said ALIVE, but still. And he arrived a day later. This was before he had an iLoki. That arrived about a week after he’d been back.”

“Everyone has an iLoki except for me and my monkey.”

“You have a monkey?”

“No.”

“Bust.”

“Yeah. I’ll get on that after I fix the bathrooms up. Or the living room. Wait, what was I going to remodel? I can’t remember.”

“No idea. I thought you were done after you fixed the barn?”

“Oh. I should do that too.”

“I can’t call Steve.”

“Yeah, you can. Call him and cry. If you cry, he won’t be able to be mad at you.”

Jess gave him a look. Clint winked, then made a big show of looking back at his phone screen. As if on cue, Nate wailed, flaying his little fists, and Laura stumbled down the stairs blindly. Clint left Jess on the porch to aid his wife in her sleep deprived state feed their child.

Two hours later, Jess reappeared with red, puffy eyes and said, “You were right. I cried a lot and he only yelled at Loki.”

“Loki was there?” Clint asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Did I wake you?”

“No,” Clint lied, sitting up. Connor was holding his baby brother, showing the baby the joys of blocks. Nate was mostly gumming them. “I was cat napping.”

“Sure.”

“So, Loki’s back?”

“Evidently. I think Steve was more pissed Loki hadn’t told him than I was keeping it secret. They’re going to go looking.”

She looked dejected. Clint cocked his head to the side.

“I lost him. Once Steve finds him, he’s not going to come back,” she whispered.

“You always said you wanted out of the superhero game.”

“He’s the perfect homemaker, Clint. Sebastian is a homemaker at heart.”

“Yes, but he’s also the Winter Solider and if he remembers being Bucky, he will naturally wish to protect Steve’s dumb ass.”

Jess looked so forlorn Clint wished he hadn’t said that, but it was the truth.

“I told him he was going to leave me for SHIELD. Everyone does.”

“Don’t stay that. You left us for snow and ice.”

“The cold doesn’t bother me.”

“ANYWAY!” Lila sung out loudly and out of tune.

Connor groaned, burying his face in his little brother’s fuzzy hair.

“And he isn’t going to leave you for SHEILD. If anything, he’s going to leave you for the Avengers. Totally different. The Avengers pay is…dismal.”

Jess sighed, giving him a look, but walked off without saying a further word.

“Did her boyfriend break up with her?” Lila asked.

“Kinda,” Clint allowed, yawning deeply. “Where’s your mom?”

“Sleeping. It’s all you two do any more. You are so boring,” Lila complained. “And now that Jess’s boyfriend broke up with her she’s boring too. Adults are all boring.”

“I love being boring,” Clint bragged. “Now, did we eat breakfast?”

“No! Pancakes!” both kids exclaimed as Nate began to fuss and Laura came stumbling down the stairs.

“You know, Mom, that is just freaky the way you do that,” Connor remarked, handing over his baby brother to Laura.

“It’s Mom Magic,” Laura claimed, taking Nate and plopping down on the couch. “Where’s Jess?”

“Crying her eyes out,” Lila supplied, bouncing up and down. “Her boyfriend broke up with her and Steve is stealing him.”

Laura blinked a few times as she blindly moved to feed Nate.

“Steve stole her boyfriend? I thought she didn’t have a boyfriend? Just a weird vet she picked up and was letting live with her. And why would Steve steal him? He sounded like a disaster.”

“She told you about Sebastian but not me?” Clint asked, feeling insulted as he began to mix up the pancakes. “Some best friend. Tells my wife juicy details but not me.”

“You were in DC trying to help Nat out,” Laura reminded him. “Then doing Avenger stuff. We both know better than to call you while you’re doing that, so she called me.”

“And she told you about a vet she picked up off the side of the road?”

“Well, no. She said he came into the salon,” Laura admitted, waking up further. She rubbed her eyes. “And he didn’t have a place to live, so since he was a vet and stuff, she took him in. She’s part superhuman, or something. I was worried he’d steal all her stuff, but that didn’t happen. She seemed happy. And he fed her.”

“She tell you anything else?”

“He made friends with people in these classes he took in the city and some coffee shop. He liked cooking. We maybe only talked three times since she’d let the guy move in, so we didn’t talk about it often. She never mentioned him to you? Didn’t you go visit?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t tell anyone lived there besides her.”

“Really?”

“But, that makes sense. Wouldn’t want her Avengers friends to know he was there.”

“Where did he go?”

“HYDRA hunting,” Clint supplied.

“Hydras regrow heads,” Connor randomly proclaimed.

“Correct,” Clint said, pointing at Connor with the frying pan. “Now, who wants to help Dad make the pancakes?”

“ME!” Lila exclaimed, scrambling into the kitchen.

After pancakes were eaten and Nate had been fed and was napping, Clint’s phone rang. He looked at it, sighed, and answered.

“Yeah?”

“She told you.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“Because you were asleep. She told me this morning at three am. Did you want me to call you then?”

Silence.

“Steve tell you?”

“Yes. I was right there, Clint. I was there. I saw him.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Steve sent me to Thailand for the lead. I went because I thought…”

“Bruce might be there?”

“He likes tropical climates.”

“Okay. You saw Barnes and just let him go?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because he blew up the lab. And he saw me first. I only saw him because he let me,” Natasha realized and cursed in Russian. “He knew he was being tailed by more than one organization. HYDRA was there. And the ATCU.”

“The what?”

“You’ll be briefed if you ever come back on duty.”

“Okay. So, you knew multiple groups were after him?”

“I took out the HYDRA agents. The other group is US government.”

“Ah. Okay. I guess they’d want him, too.”

“Several governments want him, several private organizations want him, and several individuals are after him. Steve sees none of this, though.”

“Likely because they see Steve and hide.”

Nat snorted.

“So, what’s the deal?”

“Steve and Loki are taking Wanda out for a spin.”

“Natasha Romanov that sounds so dirty you should be ashamed of yourself.”

Clint didn’t need to see the smirk to know it was there.

“Okay, so they’ve got a plan.”

“Yeah. Loki tracked his fake passport to a flight to San Francisco via Denver, so that’s where they are starting.”

“A good place to start.”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Steve should just leave this be. He’s not worth it.”

“Nat, listen to yourself.”

“He’s not. He’s the Winter Solider.”

“Not from what I hear. I hear he’s Sebastian Stan and loves baking. He can frost a mean cupcake.”

“He is a HYDRA tool. He will always be a HYDRA tool. He is not worth—”

“Some said that about you,” Clint remarked. “I didn’t agree and here we are.”

There was a beat of silence before, “I was never a HYDRA tool.”

“No, but you were a brainwashed tool.”

Natasha let out a noisy breath through her nose. “How’s Nate?”

“Finally deciding that napping isn’t for the weak.”

“Good. I need to go.”

“Okay. But, you need to understand, Steve will never see the Winter Solider as anyone other than Bucky Barnes. No matter what.”

“I know.”

Natasha hung up. Clint sighed and felt a storm brewing.

“I feel like a war is going to start soon,” Jess said quietly from behind him. Clint turned and gave her a tired look. “Washington and it’s idiots have already started it, really, with the trials they held after the fall of SHEILD. And after the whole Ultron mess? It’s going to get worst. And do you know what? Marvel did always love to challenge it’s characters and do political things.”

“They’re going to make superheroes register, aren’t they?” Clint quietly asked, trying to remember his comic books. “Anyone with powers or access to special equipment. They’re going to make them go public and try to keep track.”

Jess nodded, looking disgusted. “It’s what people do when they’re scared or full of hate, right?”

“Yeah. Did you talk to Loki?”

“He froze his iPhone when…well, he’s one of the enhanced humans now and froze his phone with his new frozen powers.”

“Why is _Frozen_ such a theme in our lives?”

“Do you wanna build a snowman?”

“No. Go away, Jessica.”

“Okay. Bye.”

“Wait, don’t really go away.”

“I wasn’t. Anyway, what are you going to do? I mean, you’re not super, you don’t have super special equipment. You have a bow and arrow.”

“Yeah, but I’m wicked at using them.”

“True. But, whose side are you going to be on?”

“The one that will protect my identity and keep my family safe from the prying eyes of the world.”

“And who do you think will do that?”

“Not the government,” Clint grumbled. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“We could just sit around singing ‘Let It Go’ and see what happens.”

Clint let out a belt of a laugh. “That’d be hilarious if we all just sat around having a sing off to _Frozen_ songs.”

“ _THE COLD NEVER BOTHERED ME ANYWAY!”_

_“DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOW MAN? DO YOU WANNA GO AND PLAY?”_

_“WE FINISH EACH OTHERS---“_

_“SANDWICHES!”_

_“WINTER IS A GOOD TIME TO STAY IN AND CUDDLE, PUT ME IN SUMMER AND I’LL BE A—”_

_“PUDDLE!”_

_“_ That’s not how it goes,” Lila said from the doorway to the living room. “Why are you yelling _Frozen_ songs?”

“Fighting a war,” Jess proclaimed, pumping her fist in the air. “How about we watch the movie?”

Lila’s eyes lit up and she grabbed Jess’s hand, dragging her off. Clint chuckled, picturing Steve and Tony screaming the lyrics across each other on the battlefield. He sobered up when he realized that could actually happen. (Well, maybe not the shouting _Frozen_ lyrics at one another.)

* * *

_When enemies are at your door / I’ll carry you away from war / If you need help, if you need help_

_-Phillip Phillips, “Gone Gone Gone”_


End file.
